dominant tendency. Whether it be a bevy of teasing schoolgirls, a crowd of badgering boys, a democratic convention, or an association of scientific savants, mere numbers are liable to carry over confidence into impudence and scorn. This flush, full life, which is the plethora of numerical strength, often requires to be moderated by cold, outside criticism, exploding some of its bubbles, that it may see how very little there is in them. The disadvantages attendant on this reign of the press have, indeed, their compensations, and we would not forget the fact. If composition is made less thoughtful and patient, it becomes more incisive and brilliant; if it possesses less strength, grandeur, and coherence, it is more lively, flexible, and serviceable. If the fruits of thought decay quickly, they ripen rapidly, and help out the day with a grateful repast. If here and there a unique and modest laborer is overlooked, many others have astonishing rewards heaped upon them; and an intense stimulus to inventive and literary activity pervades all classes. In this direction is found the grand recompense for all the incident evils of the press its prodigality, frivolity, publicity, idle gossip, and pestiferous scandal. It furnishes the half-loaf to the masses so long without bread. If it does not give the best, it gives something, and that to all, and there is an absoluteness in this all never before dreamed of. As the press is our peculiar instrument, dissemination, diffusion are our great social features. Quantity, universality of adaptation, and complete distribution are the salient, literary characteristics of our time. Those branches of inquiry and literature prosper which grow out of multitudinous activity and life, and those languish which seek privacy and individual strength. Natural science, which thrives on the various enlarged observations of many inquirers, and their rapid interchange of results, now knows no limits to its growth. Social theories, which pertain to the masses, and require for their quick development argument and answer, assertion and counter-assertion, principles and exceptions, coming in from all sides, pass almost immediately

from conception to promulgation, from promulgation with amendments and re-amendments to adoption. The entire community, with its rapid interchange of sentiments, is a single legislative body on these topics, recommitting them, from time to time, to their first friends and advocates for further digestion. Fiction, which is the literary food of the many, is productive as never before. From that which is inexpressibly bad to that which is exceedingly good, it grows in indigenous strength, flourishes as on its native soil. Mathematics, metaphysics, theology, on the other hand, which prosper in the solitude of the meditative mind; forms of poetry and art which mark the strong individuality of their authors, either absolutely lose ground, or fail to keep pace with the general progress.

That the popular mind, when it first enters the field of sentiment and knowledge, should grade down the current literature and science to its own taste, is inevitable, and, in view of all results, not to be regretted. Yet this fact is not in contradiction of the fact, that it is the more necessary sturdily to resist this tendency, and to maintain individual tastes and pursuits as against this all-controlling voice of the majority. Something of this struggle has been seen in the lecture-system for the past half-dozen years. Appealing directly to the people for support, there has been a constant pressure to increase the taking, popular element in it, till, even in such a city as Boston, more than half of the popular lectures of the season owe their success to humor and drollery. Some communities have opened a reactionary effort by the establishment of continuous courses of scientific lectures; yet even in these the experimental, pyrotechnic features must prevail. The degeneracy of the drama is chiefly due to this appeal to the masses for support. If, therefore, we are neither to lose the many, nor to be ourselves lost in the many, we must retain the press, and resist its domination. We must be content to be ignorant of what the papers say, that we may be the more thoroughly cognizant of what wise men think. We must reserve our chief strength

for that solitary life of the soul, into which each for himself, without human companionship, enters. The child brought up in solitude learns to study and acquire in silence; placed in the public school, he is distracted by many voices and the hum of other lips. He only thrives again, when, by abstraction, he creates a second solitude, and advances with others uncontrolled by them.

The American press prides itself too much, we believe, on its newspaper features. Great enterprise and large resources are shown in the gathering of information; but, at the same time, a value is attached to news, as mere news, which does not belong to it. A classification of news, a resolution of it into quickly accessible and serviceable items that have a drift and purpose, is a duty which an editor ought not to evade. If the press is to be truly influential, it must not owe its success to its reporters primarily. The political, intellectual, moral aim of a paper should give it a controlling character, which will not suffer it to be the dispenser of unsorted, unverified news. Journalism of this indiscriminate nature has an influence in making social movements rapid, in pushing forward events to a speedy issue, but comparatively little in arresting, guiding, restraining public sentiment.

It is, indeed, due in a great measure to the daily press that reforms assume with us so decided and energetic a character, that the condition of every part of society is brought so fully to the light, and that criticism and correction are so fearlessly applied. We cannot, however, assent to a view which seems prevalent, that this movement is an almost automatic and necessary one; that the press must yield its columns to the so-called news, without purpose, conscience, or consideration; that every item which can command a reader is vendible, and that that which is vendible must find a place in a full market. If it be the function of the press primarily to stimulate and gratify public curiosity, to sweep together the information which an insatiate appetite has learned to crave, then, far from being

the great moral force of our times, it is but a new and dangerous condition imposed on moral forces, it only gives more mercurial and volcanic features to society, without furnishing those clues of truth, those well-defined and patent purposes by which these are to be controlled and utilized. The character of a journal should as thoroughly pervade its news-columns as its editorials, and its editorials should be the seat of its strength. The simple circulation of news undoubtedly plays an important part in the form of our civilization, giving breadth of influence to the forces rife among us, bringing facts and theories into quick collision, with a speedy elimination of truth; yet these results can only be complete, safe, and satisfactory when those who are instrumental in them understand them, and contribute material pertinent to the issues in hand. News may easily lose its office and value by its very bulk; and it is not the man who loves news as news that draws from it its lessons, and makes it the data of a sound social philosophy. It is not till a reflective power of some sort has appeared, observing and classifying facts with reference to an end of its own, that the news of the day assumes any especial significance, or is made to subserve any important purpose.

The commercial paper might as well hope to reach its object by a promiscuous circulation of all the items and facts of trade, as the journal to attain the ends of daily influence and instruction by mere news. It is the office of the journalist, at least in a rapid, preliminary way, to subject the news to that discrimination which sifts it, gives it character, and sends it on a definite mission.

There are two sorts of influence that belong to the press. The one is involuntary, and incidental to its very existence; the other is designed, and turns on the ability with which its duties are discharged. The first is that by which intensity, diffusion, mobility, are imparted to our intellectual and social states, and changes of whatever character are carried speedily forward. This result is a necessary consequence of the mechanical facilities afforded by the press, into whosesoever

possession it may have fallen. The second form of influence much better deserves the name, is directly due to those who employ the press, who give it the material it is to circulate. This material, like all intellectual products, will owe its power to the moral purpose and thoughts of those who produce it; and the journalist, like other intellectual laborers, becomes influential only as he is fruitful in thoughts, sentiments, theories. He is thrown back on individual power, soundness of judgment, integrity of moral nature, for the extent and direction of his control. Merely as a medium of influencing men, the journal has its gains and suffers its losses. If its words come often, they go quickly; if they reach many, they touch most lightly; if they have command of the critical moments in political events and public sentiment, it is, nevertheless, only unusual skill, preconceived and definite ends, that can enable the editor to harvest his opportunities.

We wish to urge the thought, that it is not to the press as the press to mere journalism, that we are to attach the notion of a great and overshadowing power. The evils we have spoken of are rather chiefly due to it-a perpetual trespass on the privacy of individuals, a useless consumption of leisure, a fretting tyranny of public sentiment, a reduction of individuality, a loss of political influence, a fresh trial of moral integrity, and the vanity of apparent power springing from the mere fact of publicity. These evils incident to the press are to be escaped by a more just and careful estimate of its real strength, and by the recognition of the fact, that it is only truly and permanently influential as it is the medium of a controlling purpose.

If what has now been said is true of the press as circulating items of news relatively indifferent in their moral character, in an enhanced degree is it true when its columns are filled with the details of crime. It does not follow, that because transgression is not to be covered up, it is therefore to be exposed. Exposure may as much be in the interest of vice as concealment. The one or the other is faulty ac